BBS Textfiles: The Jason Scott / TEXTFILES.COM Printout Collection

During my time using BBSes in the 1980's, I would often make use of the Epson MX-80
line printer connected to my father's IBM PC XT, and print out messages and files for
later reading. Usually, this was to be able to read the files in a place different
than the computer room, like the backyard deck or in a car. How well this usually
worked out escapes me, but it meant that I slowly built a very large collection of
printouts, ranging from 1983 through to 1985.

In the early 1990s, to divest myself of my childhood, I gave the box of these
printouts to a friend, and never expected to see them again. In 2001, that friend
noted the amount of work I'd been doing with BBS textfiles and asked me if I wanted
the box back, which I gladly accepted.

Many of these printouts are of files already existent on TEXTFILES.COM, and are
already saved. But many others are not; they are printouts of the message bases
of BBSes I was calling at the time, right from the screen as they scrolled by
into the printer. They are therefore entirely unabridged handfuls of historical
data from these BBSes, some of which were busted, others completely gone in
memories and time. In some cases, these printouts, 20 years after the fact, may
be the remaining evidence the board ever existed.

This collection consists of those printouts, captured using Optical Character
Recognition (OCR) software and then hand-edited to the best of my ability to accurately
represent the printout they came from. As these writings of events decades past
come to light, they give context, information, and insight.